


A Lack of Color

by sciencebutch



Series: Lycanthrope AU [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008), The Incredible Hulk (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Autistic Bruce Banner, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Comic Book Science, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Werewolf AU!, again i will reiterate: everyone is gay and trans don't test me, everything is the same but bruce is a werewolf, hulk is in this but like... he’s a wolf, we all want ross to die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-06-25 12:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15641058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciencebutch/pseuds/sciencebutch
Summary: Bruce Banner becomes a creature that exists only in fairy tales. He falls in love with a god who exists only in Nordic myth.





	1. Wolf Moon

**Author's Note:**

> hello im hope and i love werewolf angst with all my heart and soul thanks for coming to my ted talk
> 
>  
> 
> warning for suicide mention/attempt.

It’s funny, how the thing that for all intents and purposes saved Bruce Banner’s life, was ultimately the same thing that destroyed it.

Bruce was experimenting on the possibility of heightening cellular regeneration with the addition of gamma radiation on complex organisms. It was a totally safe experiment. There was no room in the procedure for even a possibility of injury. Bruce had made sure of that, had spent hours at his desk running through situations in his head. He was thorough. It was totally safe. At least, it was supposed to be.

           _It was supposed to be_.

           Something malfunctioned in the machine, and Bruce ran into the testing area to fix it, his steps landing in the same rhythm of the alarm, which blared heavy and loud. In his rush he left the machine running, a machine that only he knew how to calibrate. In any other scenario he would have turned the damn thing off – Bruce followed laboratory safety protocols as if they were gospel. He wore goggles when he was working with distilled water, for God’s sake. But not this time. This time he ran into the air-locked room with a toolkit and nothing but closed-toed shoes and a lab coat to protect him.

The wolf was held down on the table, violent and snarling as he repaired a singed wire. Its leg was broken. He didn’t want to use wolves, said that mice would work well enough. Ross disagreed. Bruce could only acquiesce; the man was paying for this project, after all.

“Is it fixed?” asked the general over the intercoms.

“Yes, it should be in working order now, sir,” Bruce responded curtly, tightly. He hated talking, preferred not to, but the General would yell at him if he didn’t. And he needed this job; no one else would accept his resume.

The alarms stopped. The room was awash in a white light, bright and artificial.

“Good.”

And then everything culminated into the perfect storm; every circumstance, every second aligned in a way that was so improbable that any statistician would never even consider the possibility. He tried to figure it out, afterward; tried to figure out _how_ and _why_.

He couldn’t. How could he? He was the stuff out of fairytales. Fairytales weren’t based in scientific fact.

Bruce distinctly remembers looking at the clock through thick glass as he heard the _thunk_ of the door locking; the bolt sliding into place. He remembers reading the time, ( _10:04_ , a sequence of numbers he will never forget) when the airlock sealed. He recalls Ross, standing in _his_ spot: _outside_ the room peering in through the glass that was there for observation purposes. He recalls Ross watching indifferently as Bruce knocked furiously on the window.

           The world went in slow motion then – or at least, when Bruce looks back on it, it did. The mind has a funny way of remembering things.

Ross flicked the lever. Bruce and the machine jolted in tandem, the former in shock and disbelief, and the latter because that was its job. He watched as his experiment worked.

It worked a little too well. The serum was injected into the wolf’s neck, the gamma radiation washed over the room in a wave and Bruce felt sick. Ross couldn’t hear him through the glass, but he read the man’s lips as he turned to face him and ask “ _why?_ ”, eyes wide and fearful. Ross didn’t respond, simply looked on.

And then… _and then_.

And then the wolf snarled and broke free from its fetters. Bruce’s skin tingled, each and every cell vibrating violently. He wanted to throw up. He felt hot and cold at the same time. _Radiation poisoning_ , he thought.

The wolf was bigger, now, after the gamma treatment. All sinewy and corded. Its broken leg had snapped back into place. Muscles rippled as it approached him, and Bruce backed away. His back bumped into the wall. The wolf pounced and got a hold of his shoulder.

Bruce vaguely recalls accepting death as his shoulder was held in an iron vice, ensnared in a maw of incisors. And then he remembers pain. And then he remembers screaming.

And then he remembers nothing.

\--

Bruce wakes up to the sound of a bug crawling up a blade of grass five feet away from his ear. He startles and jolts on the ground, hand quickly rushing to his shoulder. It doesn’t hurt. Everything else did, though. He smells blood on himself, but it’s faint and old. There’s a mass of scar tissue over the wound on his shoulder, pale and pink.

Or at least, he assumes it’s that color, because that’s what scars usually look like. When he looks at it, it’s a light brown.

Everything is different, he realizes. He observes his surroundings, and he finds that he has woken up in a world where everything is in varying shades of yellow or blue. A tree rustles nearby from a squirrel scurrying up it. The leaves were a grayish-yellow. His fingers clutched at grass that was gray rather than green. His pants – which were barely pants at this point, just scraps of fabric that hung off of his hips – were blue. He _knows_ they were purple.

He’s colorblind, he realizes. Confined to a world where his eyes no longer register reds or greens or pinks and purples. His heart drops to his navel, where a seed of dread has been planted. Bruce is disoriented as he stands up. He feels like he’s on an alien planet where trees were yellow and grass was gray and purple was blue and everything was _wrong_.

He felt wrong. Felt different and weird. Smells bombarded his nose with every breath, so Bruce breathed through his mouth instead. Noises – God, there were so _many_ – were everywhere. He heard everything, and it suffocated him. Soundwaves entered his ear and clogged his throat. A bird landing on a tree branch ten feet away felt like someone was breathing in his ear. Goosebumps rose on his skin.

           Bruce assumes this is what a hangover feels like. He had never gotten drunk before; he hated the smell and taste and memories and everything associated with alcohol. Everything was too much. He gripped his head tightly, hands shut in tight fists around clumps of hair, but he immediately lets go when he scratches himself. _Hard_.

           He retracts his hands. Stares at them at an arm’s length. His nails are dark brown and concaved, pointy and sharp. _Like an animal’s_ …He thinks. He licks his lips nervously, and his canines graze the top of his tongue. They are sharp too, pointy. Too pointy. He sniffles and smells meat about a mile off, fresh and _raw_. An urge within him begged to run and maul it; rip it to shreds.

           “ _What’s happening to me?_ ” Bruce whispered to himself, and even that rang loud in his ears. He didn’t feel like he was in his own body. Everything felt both fake and horribly, terribly real at the same time.

           He looks back at the gnarled scar on his shoulder. How long had he been out? The wolf had torn his shoulder to shreds, it would have taken a month for the wound to heal to where it was now. Not only that, how was Bruce _alive_? Where even was he? How did he get here? Why were his pants so torn? Why did he hurt all over?

His head barraged him with questions that he couldn’t answer. He was unused to the sensation of not knowing something, of being so very _lost_ and confused that you don’t even feel like you know yourself.

           A dart struck his neck. Bruce pawed at it, suddenly uncoordinated and woozy. He pulled it out. It’s in his hand now. He looks at it. It’s yellow. The tip is sharp. Probably had some sort of sedative in it…

He crumples to the ground.

           The cage Bruce wakes up in is small and cramped. He finds he isn’t able to lay down fully, and he can’t stretch his arms out all the way. His shredded pants were replaced with new ones made of a scratchy fabric that he couldn’t stand. They were yellow and gray. Everything seemed to be yellow and gray. He swallowed thickly and felt his Adam’s apple bob against something around his neck.

           _Something was around his neck_. His hand reached up to see what it was, and he flinched when he accidentally scratched himself; he wasn’t used to how sharp his nails were. The thing was leather. It was connected to a metal chain at the back of his neck. He pulled on the strap, trying to keep it away from his throat.

           Bruce felt like he was dying, yet adrenaline flowed through his veins and his heart was beating so furiously that he felt more alive than ever. He couldn’t breathe because of the _thing_ around his neck and his legs flexed and cramped, subconsciously trying to escape the fabric that set his nerves ablaze. The walls were too close. He shut his eyes firmly and flapped his hands quickly, desperately. It helped a bit. The repetitive movements were something he could control.

           He was starting to calm down. He took deep breaths; in through the nose, out through the mouth. He inhaled, and his nose caught a scent of cigar smoke and his ears picked up the click of heels on tile. He didn’t exhale. The smoke got closer and the heels got louder until everything was bad again and his senses were overloaded. Bruce curled into a ball and rocked back and forth. Somewhere deep down he realized he was having a panic attack. He felt that that was warranted.

           “Hello Doctor Banner,” Ross spoke. Bruce was wearing the same yellow and gray pants that he was – army uniform, then. “How do you feel?”

           “Too much…’s too much,” Bruce’s words were slurred slightly; he wasn’t used to talking with his teeth as long and sharp as they were. Ross hummed. There was no emotion behind the sound.

           “I’ll come back when you’re more…coherent,” the General spoke, before turning on his heel and walking away. The rubber of his shoe twisting on linoleum made a horrific sound. Bruce flinched fiercely, fingers twitching. He lunged forward to grasp the bars of the cage. The metal burned his hands; turned his skin inside out. He retracted them immediately, and a snarl rushed past the confines of his mouth. Ross smirked, “The silver seems to be working nicely,” he said. _Silver?_

“Silver?” he mumbled, rubbing his hands. They still burned. Ross stops and turns back to face him.

           “Yes, Doctor Banner,” Ross says lightly, “You’re a chemist, you know what silver is.”

           He glared at Ross. Of _course_ he knows what silver is (Ag on the periodic table…atomic number of 47…mass number of 107.87…), but Bruce’s mind was going a mile a minute. He couldn’t think; not coherently, at least. Beginnings and endings of questions tumbled throughout his head, disjointed and illogical. Prefixes were matched with the wrong suffixes. There was too much; too many occurrences that strayed from his perfectly formulated routine which he stuck to religiously. His brain didn’t know how to react. “Why does silver hurt me?” he finally asks, lips shaping around sharp teeth. It took half of his energy just to say those five words. He hated talking.

           “Do you not remember?” Ross asks. At Bruce’s blank stare, he says, “It seems as if the gamma radiation along with the bite from the wolf infected you with an interesting form of lycanthropy.”

           “Ly-lycanthropy?” Bruce asked. “What’re you saying? ‘M a werewolf?” The idea was quite laughable, if he was honest. Or it would be, if Bruce didn’t wake up colorblind. If he didn’t wake up with claws and sharp teeth and could smell and hear things from miles away.

           “Indeed, Doctor Banner.”

           Bruce felt like he was going to throw up.

\--

           Bruce wakes up the next month in the forest again. He doesn’t remember what happened the night before (he doesn’t remember what happened in the past month, actually, he just knows it had been bad and _painful_ ), but when he licks his canines he tastes blood. His pants are in tatters and his chest is bare.

His ears perk up when he hears the soldiers coming from a mile away, their feet stomping through soft earth, their hands rustling through brambles.

           He runs. He runs and runs and runs and never stops. Thorns slice the skin on his bare legs and chest, but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t dare.

Ten minutes later the cuts have healed; the only hint of them having existed at all was the dried blood, thick and like a second skin.

\--

Bruce can’t afford a motel, so he sleeps under the stars when he feels like he’s gotten far enough away from Ross. He thinks it’s better this way; a wild animal should sleep outdoors, because that’s where it belongs.

He wakes up the next morning covered in leaf litter, a confetti of oranges and reds and greens -

He blinks. The pigments are faint, but there nonetheless. They were pastel and soft; as if the colors had been swept away in the rain, leaving the shadows behind...

 _Maybe…_ he thinks, _just maybe this is wearing off…_ and for the first time in two months hope blossoms in his stomach.

 _He could get his life back_.

The colors get brighter, more vibrant each day.

Until they don’t. Until they fade from his sight a few days later, and Bruce wakes up in a field of gray grass.

Bruce starts studying moon phases, notices a correlation between them and his animalistic instincts. He realizes that the colors come back around the new moon, only to leave when it waxes.

The Wolf comes and goes with the moon, pulled forward and back like the tides; a slave to its gravitational pull.

Bruce is no longer in control of his life, he realizes. He had given up any autonomy he had over a month ago.

\--

He wakes up on the day of the full moon feeling shaky; apprehensive. His scar aches, a phantom pain that gets progressively worse as the sun arcs through the sky. Bruce is on edge the whole day, feeling the Wolf being pulled to the fore by the moon. It becomes more and more difficult to not growl at any unexpected stimulus as the day wears on. It’s hard to think, his brain devolves into that of a beast.

And then he’s thrust into agony when the sun sets. Each bone crunches loud in his ears, which have migrated to the top of his head. His skin itches as fur colonizes it, growing fast and sudden. His back bends unnaturally, curling in a way that sets his nerves on fire. He collapses on the ground, unable to support his body on his hands and knees because they were _also_ changing, buckling and cracking. His legs bend at a thirty-degree angle, snapping at the knee. The bones in his feet compress, his knuckles following soon after. It hurts like silver, but _worse._

_So much worse._

The last thing Bruce remembers after he transforms is howling, long and loud, before his memory goes blank and the Wolf takes over completely.

\--

           (3rd Incident.)

           His body _hurts_ after a transformation, he finds. His bones ache as if he was ninety, his joints feel arthritic, his muscles are tight. He discovers he has stretch marks as well; angry red-but-yellow lines like lightning bolts, zigzagging across his torso and abdomen. After every full moon – and how odd it was, that he was basing the entirety of his shaky routine on the phases of the moon – he would wake with new scars, pink (or so he assumed) and inflamed. Fresh. Without the encouragement of an entire platoon of army men chasing him, he found he could not garner the energy to do much for the next day.  

           Bruce manages to crawl over to a pond, arms and legs shaking. The water is clear and still; tadpoles swim along the bottom. He drinks it greedily. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until now.

           When he lifts his head, he sees his reflection for the first time in two months. He gasps; sips air in through his mouth in surprise. He looks different. Bruce wants to tear off his own skin, wants to rip it off because the thing in the water _wasn’t him_. His teeth were sharper, no longer neat little squares lined up in two neat little rows in his mouth. They were _big_ , inhuman. Everything about him looked vaguely inhuman, he realizes. His ears were slightly pointed on top, and they twitched with every sound they picked up. Even his eyes had changed. They were bright gray. _Green_ , he corrected himself. His eyes were bright green.

           He feels sick. He throws up whatever meal the Wolf ate last night.

\--

Bruce’s stretch marks disappear over the month, the angry lines fading as his body heals itself. They come back after the next transformation, though, never in the same spots as they were previously. His body never stays the same and he hates it.

Bruce doesn’t feel like himself anymore.

\--

The army always finds Bruce, no matter how far away he gets. Bruce always hears them coming from miles away, his ears twitching. The army would chase him and he would run, abandoning his ragtag campsite. He runs and runs and runs, stamina seemingly endless, eternal.

He finds a tracking chip in the back of his neck later, buried right under the skin. Bruce tears it out of his flesh with claws. His blood is pink, rather than red, as red things typically were when the moon wanes. Tears of frustration prickle his eyes as he throws the chip into the ground, burying it in rotten leaves.

He just wants to be left alone.

\--

(4th Incident.)

He tries to reintegrate into society, somewhat. Rejects the philosophy that because he’s an animal he should live like one. He’s a _person_ , a scientist with seven PhDs. And besides, he’ll feel more human if he does human things. Bruce rejects the Wolf to the best of his ability, ignores all his instincts. He gets a job, buys meat from the market instead of hunting for it, ( _moments flash in his mind, moments of clawing and tearing at fur and flesh…)_.

A while back, he had found out that he can only digest meat when it’s close to the full moon; his body rejects everything else. He had bought a cup of tea with what meager amount of change he had, to try and wake him up a couple days after a transformation. He threw it up thirty minutes later and felt sick for the rest of the day. The Wolf forbade his one comfort, the thing he had depended on for calming anxiety attacks and bouts of anger; he forbade it when Bruce needed it most.

Bruce wears a hat to cover his ears, doesn’t smile or speak, doesn’t reveal his jaw full of small white daggers. He blends in. He works at whatever place accepts him, accepts less than minimum wage, gets paid under the table. He doesn’t buy much, just food and clothes.

At the end of the month he gives all the money he’s saved up to a beggar on the street, and ventures back into the forest with naught but the clothes on his back. The clothes that he will inevitably lose, as well.

He isn’t allowed to have worldly possessions. The Wolf and the moon forbade it.

\--

           (7th Incident.)

           Bruce helps the sick while he runs from Ross. He heals in places where there are no healers and medicates where there’s no medicine. He only stays for a month, sometimes even less, before his body contorts and contracts and stretches painfully under the full moon. Until he wakes up somewhere with nothing and has to start his life anew. In one town someone gives him medical equipment for free. He says they’re the only supplies they had. “ _People cough up blood on the street,_ ” he says, “ _People throw up and sneeze and infect other people. It’s a vicious cycle._ ” And _oh_ , how Bruce knows about vicious cycles.

He takes the medical kit, goes to help out.

The tools are silver. They burn brands into his palms that only he can see as he uses them to do checkups. He hurts but he helps others not hurt. He’s in agony that whole month and was glad when his scar pounded – a sign that the full moon approaches.

But he deserves the pain the silver brings him.

He deserves it. Deserves it for waking up every month with dried blood around his mouth, with pieces of torn fabric and gore caked in his fingernails.

Bruce heals the town, using those tools and those tools only.

His hands feel like they’re on fire the whole time.

He deserves it.

\--

(10th Incident.)

Bruce bites his nails down to the quick one month; he doesn’t bother buying a nail file, he would just lose it within the next few days, anyway. Besides, his teeth do a good enough job. His nails are still dark and brown, but at least they aren’t razor sharp and animalistic.

They come back after he transforms, long and sharp and deadly. The Wolf always comes back, no matter how much Bruce tries to get rid of it, tries to purge it from his body. He sobs and screams with frustration until his throat is raw.

The next month he buys a nail file, files his nails down furiously until there’s almost nothing left. Then he does his teeth, wears the pointed enamel down until they look somewhat normal. It hurts but they look normal.

Of course, they grow back after the Wolf comes out, leaving Bruce feeling incredibly helpless.

\--

(15th Incident.)

He gets used to his enhanced hearing and sense of smell. Finds out the range of each (3.38 kilometers for smell, 12.55 kilometers for hearing). It’s done out of a grim sort of curiosity; to see exactly how inhuman he had become. He learns what colors are what when he’s colorblind.

He adapts. He lives.

He hates it.

\--

(59th Incident.)

Somewhere along the way, Bruce finds a gun.

He despises guns, can barely stand them (it was a primal feeling that emerged one day from deep inside, after he woke up after a full moon with bullet scars). He hates guns, but he tucks it into his pocket anyway. _For later,_ he tells himself. He never specifies in his mind what’s going to happen _later_ , but he knows deep down.

He buys the bullet from a pawn shop. _Pure silver_ , the tag said. Cigarette smoke forms clouds on the ceiling with no ventilation to let it out. An atmosphere of nicotine. The clerk speaks as he rings up his purchase, “ _’Ya gonna kill a werewolf or somethin’?_ ” His words were meant in jest; all in good fun. A dark sense of foreboding whips through Bruce as he says, “ _Something like that_ ,” and walks out the door. He didn’t bother to haggle; talking was exhausting. Everything was exhausting.

Later, in the darkness of his hovel, he throws up, the pain being too much to handle. There’s blood and gore in the sick, pieces of red-but-yellow brain matter. And something else, as well. There, sparkling terribly, lay the silver bullet. Not silver enough, apparently. Bruce sobs, not because of the pain, no, he was used to that. He sobs because when he removes his hand from the back of his head, all that remains on his palm is dried blood, the wound having mended in minutes. He kneels on the floor, chest exposed, showing off the tight pale scar of the bite wound, the stretch marks from transforming, the claw marks and bullet wound scars. They had all hurt immensely. Nothing hurt as much as this, though.

The silver flowed through his arteries and set every nerve aflame.


	2. Blood Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce is found by Ross and forced to face some horrible truths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took me a week to write,, h
> 
> warning for brief mentions of torture & generally just sadness all around  
> cheers. huzzah.

Every month he would wake up and count down the seconds until the next full moon; see how long he has left in this town, this body. Keep track of the time he has left where he can still consider himself human. Time ticks and tocks and Bruce tricks himself into thinking he isn’t a monster until he is one; until hands and feet become paws and his nose becomes a snout. Until he loses control.

And then the Wolf recedes with the moon as it sets. Bruce is reborn, and the timer begins again. From high to low tide, from monster to man. It’s always one extreme to another, for Bruce. Two sides of a spectrum.

His lifestyle has been built on a shaky foundation of contrasts, contradictions.

Bruce wakes up in a forest of yellow and gray, in tattered pants and in pain. His skin is mottled with stretch marks and scars, all of which are new and unfamiliar - save for the bite mark, which is the only constant, the only thing that remains the same throughout this hellish cycle. Valleys and ridges of inflamed pale tissue, old and shiny and ugly, mar his shoulder. A reminder of what he was, what he wasn’t.

There’s wool in his teeth. Seems like the Wolf managed to attack a sheep last night. He frowns, suddenly upset. He hates being reminded of the carnage that the Wolf causes every month.

He adopts a routine of waking up after a full moon, finds it helps to deal with the unfamiliarity of it all: he wakes up on the damp floor of the forest, hair tangled with gray leaves and dried mud, head pulsing, body aching, heart pounding. There’s always something wedged in between his canines. In this case, there’s wool. It makes him extremely uncomfortable; pushes him over the edge from uneasiness to complete and utter overstimulation.

He wants to crawl out of his own skin. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling.

Bruce would then get up and walk with shaky legs until he finds a hint of civilization.

He always smells it before he sees it.

It’s a farm, this time, on the fringes of society. A worn dirt road is the only other hint of human involvement in the area. It’s isolated, small, smells like earth and manure. Wheat fields float with the wind, dancing and swaying; a patchwork of gold. On the edge of this farmland is a house. It’s old, with white paint peeling, shutters rusted shut, bricks crumbling.

Various articles of clothing drifted in the breeze on a clothesline nearby. Bingo. He clutches at the scraps of fabric that dangle at his hips. They had been pants, once.

_ He had been a man, once. _

Bruce stumbled towards the clothesline, wincing with every step he took. His muscles felt like lead, heavy and inflexible. He kicked up dirt as he walked, feet too burdensome to lift all the way.

A woman turned from where she was digging in the soil to look at him approach. Her face was old and weathered, rather matronly. She smelled like dirt and fresh bread. Her heart beat strong in her chest, a hearty  _ thump thump _ ,  _ thump thump _ which resounded in his head. It was still close enough to the full moon that he wanted to  _ rip and bite and scratch  _ at the sound until it stopped. He repressed a snarl in the back of his throat, and the very action reminded him of how utterly inhuman he was.

The woman’s face wrinkled into concern when she spotted his scars and tattered clothing and generally just  _ everything  _ about him. Her eyes lingered on his shoulder, on the bite mark, the curse.

She stood up. “ _ Você está bem?” _ she called. The language sounded familiar; a lot like Spanish.  _ Portuguese _ , _ probably, _ his mind supplied, and that set it off, sent his head whirring and thinking so fast he could barely keep up:

_ Portuguese: Romance language, analogous to Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian. Spoken in Portugal and Brazil. Translation: “você” resembles “vous” in French, “vous” means “you”, “está” is similar to “est” in French as well, “est” means “is”, and pulling from the context of this situation, we can assume “bem” means well, or good. So, “Are you well”, is what she’s asking. _

       “Uhm…” he tried to think of a response, “Do you speak English?” he said, an apologetic smile on his face. It was an awkward response, but he lacked the energy to parse any more Portuguese. Thinking was always rather trying after a full moon.

“A little,” she replied, accent thick. She started making her way over to Bruce. “Are you okay?”

“Ah,” Bruce stuttered -  _ why did his tongue have to be so heavy in his mouth?  _ \- “I’m fine,” he pasted a grin on his face as a way to reassure the stranger.

She gave him a skeptical look, one eyebrow raised, disbelieving. “I do not think so,” she stated simply, before grabbing his hand and dragging him towards the farmhouse. He protested weakly, saying that _no, no that isn’t necessary, I’m fine,_ but she wouldn’t relent her grip, and so he went along. He followed, because he was just so, _so_ tired, and a moment of respite was too rare of an opportunity to pass up.

Half an hour later, he was sat at the rickety table in their kitchen, fully clothed in sweatpants and an old t-shirt. Bruce picked at the soup the woman had put in front of him, eating only the meager bites of chicken within. It was still too close to the full moon for him to consume anything but meat, and his stomach churned at the sight and smell of the corn bobbing in the broth.

“Not a fan of soup, hm?” the woman asked, sitting down in front of him. He gave a noncommittal grunt in response.

They sat in silence for a while. Then:

“Did you see a big wolf last night?”

Bruce’s mind froze, his heart stopped, his breath caught in his lungs and strangled him. He must have hidden this inner turmoil well, however, because the woman’s inquisitive expression hardly faltered. Bruce coughed; cleared his throat, before shaking his head.

“I didn’t,” he said, “why?”

“Oh, it was horrible,” she began, and Bruce almost flinched, because he was that  _ horrible  _ thing that had given this nice woman such a fright, “it was big and howled all through the night. I had to get my gun out because I was so scared,” she chuckled to herself, and Bruce tried to smile but he couldn’t find the strength to. It felt as if all of the life had left him. Her grin soured as she spoke. “It got one of my sheep last night, poor thing…” Bruce felt his heart lurch in his chest, the feeling of wool in his teeth still fresh in his mind. “But it’s gone now, it must have gone back into the forest,” he nodded in response, too weary to do much else, “can you believe that I called the police because I was so afraid?”

Bruce looked at her then, eyes wide and glassy; fearful, shining like porcelain. If she had warned the authorities, that means that there are records of the fact that a large wolf is roaming around in Brazil. Records that the U.S. military can access.

Records that  _ He  _ can access. Bruce’s fingers grasped the end of the table with a grip so tenacious his knuckles turned white.

_ I have to leave. _

His eyes dart around the room, trying to find a door or window or  _ anything  _ he could escape from. The stranger senses his distress. Her face crinkles into a soothing expression.

“You do not need to worry about the wolf, it is probably long gone – “

“I have to go,” Bruce cuts her off with an apologetic smile, one that is pained and saturated with anxiety and so absolutely  _ fake  _ it comes off as a grimace instead, “Thank you for the clothes and the soup,” he says as an afterthought, pushing himself up from his chair. She gives him a confused look but doesn’t protest.

“Let me walk you out, at least!” He says nothing in response, lets her lead him to the door. Anything to get out, anything to leave  _ please just let me leave. _

She opened the door, and there, with his fist just poised to knock, stood a man in a military uniform. Bruce felt his limbs turn to stone, felt his veins freeze and his arteries burn. Everything felt cloudy and yet sharp at the same time. He didn’t move but he so dearly wanted to.

He doesn’t remember what happens next.

 

* * *

 

Bruce wakes with a start, jolting in bonds that are too tight. He inhales sharply, doesn’t exhale, holds his breath. There’s something in his mouth – a gag, probably. Something casts a shadow over him, and Bruce blinks to clear the sleep from his eyes. That something is a _someone_. A man. His hair is slicked back and greying, his chin dotted with stubble. He smells musty, like smoke and gunpowder, and this miasma clings to his nose stubbornly. He hardly needs to look at the outfit the man is wearing to know that he’s military; the scent was indicative enough.

The soldier leers at him with sunken eyes, bent one crooked lip into a semblance of a smile.

“Hello Banner,” he says, “we haven’t yet been formally introduced,” his voice is gruff and gravelly, “I’m Emil Blonsky, the one who found you.”

Bruce’s growl was muffled from the gag in his mouth. It was instinctive and primordial, belongs to the Wolf, and he’s unsure if he was afraid or angry or both.

Probably both.

“Down boy,” Blonsky says sarcastically before holding up a device. It’s a simple gray square, the size of his palm, about. A black switch protrudes from it, and Blonsky flicks it. Bruce feels a sharp twinge in his neck before something cold washes over him, makes him feel like static. Feeling seeps out of his limbs, from his fingers and feet and arms and legs. By the time he’s realized he’s being sedated, his eyes are closing, forced shut, encumbered with sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

Bruce wakes up to sweltering heat, heavy and suffocating and coating him like a second skin. He opens his eyes only to shut them immediately. The light was so bright and blinding it burned behind his eyelids. 

There are hands on him, he realizes; there are hands holding and gripping and grasping at his skeletal arms and carrying his slumped body. His legs are limp and dragging against coarse dirt. He frowns, blinks once, twice, three times before his pupils dilate and he can see without being blinded. The thing around his throat digs into his chin as his head lulls to and fro, and the sight of orange sand, dry and grainy, greets him before he manages to lift his head.

Bruce looks up. Walls of army men surround him on both sides, creating a tunnel of yellow and gray - green _and brown_ , he corrects himself. The cacophony of heartbeats he had previously tried to ignore came to the forefront of his mind. It gave him a headache, and his skin crawled from the overstimulation which stemmed from the sights and the smells and sounds and _touch_.

Touch was the worst, he couldn’t stand it; it made him want to tear his skin off.

Soldiers stand rigidly as he passes by. The sight of them aggravates the Wolf, and he has to stifle a snarl in the back of his throat.

He had been captured, it seems. The thought crashes into Bruce like a tidal wave, and he feels like he’s drowning. He feels dizzy, nauseous.

_ He had been captured _ .

He allows his head to slump back down, and he tries to ignore the feeling of whatever-it-was around his neck and the hands gripping his biceps and the heat.

_ Too much it’s too much it’s too much. _

With every step they took, Bruce could feel himself getting closer and closer to the gallows. To the electric chair. He was a man on death row, and the sound of sand being crunched underfoot rang through his head like a knell. 

They stopped walking. Foreboding lashed through Bruce like a whip. His blood froze in his veins. Then, his hair - which had gotten quite long and tangled at this point - was pulled, forcing Bruce to look up. His eyes widened minimally. 

Ross. He was tall and threatening and smelled overwhelmingly like cigar smoke. He sneered behind his atrocious mustache, eyebrow arching. Then, he spoke:

“Damn Banner, you look even more like a freak than I remember,” The gag was removed from Bruce’s mouth, who smirked behind the curtain of his hair. He cleared his throat.

“You aren’t looking too hot yourself, Ross.” 

He got a slapped on the face for that comment. It was still worth it, in his opinion.

“Get all your cheek out now, you won’t have it for much longer,” Ross said, dismissively waving a hand and walking away. Whatever snide remark he was going to make next was cut off as the gag was shoved back in his mouth.

They take him back to the silver cage he had been thrown in after his initial transformation and unbind his hands. He immediately removes the cloth from his mouth, coughing and stretching his jaw. 

Bruce slouches against the wall nonchalantly -  _ don’t show them how scared you really are, Banner  _ \- and rubs his thumb across a clenched fist, absentmindedly traces random formulae on his palm with one long brown nail. He meant for it to look blase, but it was actually a way to calm his nerves, to placate the panic simmering within.

About ten minutes into his imprisonment he notices the camera. The only reason it took him so long to see it was because the red - he assumes it’s red, at least - LED light blended in with the grayish-yellow hue of the walls. 

Wonderful; he had been getting bored. And his fear increased with every second he was left alone with his thoughts, but  _ whatever. _

(He tries to ignore how this blatant removal of his privacy makes him feel, how the eyes on him feel like hands, ghosts of a touch on his back and arms and legs and torso.)

“I wasn’t expecting a five-star hotel,” he speaks directly to the black lens of the camera, hoping that Ross was watching the video feed “but  _ come on _ , Ross, this is a new low, even for you.” He was just barely able to prevent his voice from trembling, but he thinks he did a pretty good job, all things considered. 

There is no response. Typical.

“Is there at least room service?” he continues. “Can I order a roast beef sub? Extra beef. Hold the lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, condiments, and bread, for that matter.” He actually really could go for some food. The soup that woman had given him in Brazil was hardly enough to sustain him for… however long he had been here. He waited a while for an answer, yet none came. 

Waiting for something to happen was decidedly worse than having the actual thing happen. The suspense bubbled inside him, the pressure growing and growing like soda pop when it’s shaken. It was oddly reminiscent of the day before the full moon, where foreboding surrounded his brain like a membrane, where his limbs twitched and tingled with nervous energy.

Ross comes by about an hour later, gripping the silver bars for no reason other then he  _ can _ . Bruce retracts his statement about waiting being worse ten minutes after that. 

If waiting was like shaken soda, the actual event was like popping off the cap and dropping in a mento; an explosion of fear and anger.

And pain. Lots and lots of pain.

“You aren’t very covert as the Wolf, Banner,” he says.

“I try,” Bruce replies, dry smile pasted on his face. He really didn’t try - to be covert or not covert or whatever - because he didn’t have any control over the Wolf. Quite the opposite, actually; if anything, the Wolf was the one with all the autonomy.

“32 soldiers and countless livestock,” was what Ross said next. It was abrupt, spoken with a face of stone. Bruce recoiled when he realized the meaning of his statement. His eyes grew wide. Ross kept speaking, even though he knew Bruce understood. “That’s how many casualties you’ve caused. How many have died by your hands.” 

Bruce wanted to scream that it  _ wasn’t him _ , that it was the  _ Wolf _ , that he  _ didn’t have any control it was all the Wolf, he didn’t kill anyone it was all the Wolf... _ but it  _ had  _ been him, hadn’t it? The Wolf was just his primal instinct coming to the fore, it was his desire to be left alone, his residual anger and fear dredged up from his childhood brought into the light. He said nothing.

What would he even say? What  _ could _ he even say? He didn’t deserve to defend the Wolf’s -  _ his _ \- actions. 

“It’s a good thing we managed to track you down,” Ross said, biting on his cigar. Yes, Bruce supposes, it is; a monster like him shouldn’t roam freely, shouldn’t be given access to people who were just so,  _ so _ fragile. ( _ With their bare necks and unguarded abdomens and delicate spines and wow, Banner, you really are a freak - ), _ “how unfortunate it would be if another country had gotten its hands on you.” Ross leered at him.

“Now,” he exclaimed, “let’s get to work.”

Bruce feels the familiar sensation of a needle in his throat ( _ from the thing on his neck, _ he realizes), and that odd cold coats his brain and drips into his nerves. His eyes close of their own accord and don’t open again. The last thing he sees is Ross, looking smugly down at him, chewing on his cigar. The smoke he exhales melds with the fog in his brain.

 

* * *

 

 

Bruce takes solace in the fact that Ross is trying to kill him. He goes through trial after trial of experimentation and tests.

The first one is relatively simple:

“Tissue regenerates at about one centimeter every 10 seconds,” the scientist states as he examines the fresh laceration on his leg. Bruce squirms on the table, trying to escape the silver bonds he had been locked in. His wrists and ankles feel as if they had been submerged in molten rock. His muscles feel like mush, feel like they’ve been replaced with cotton. Bruce absorbed the numbers as they spoke them, unintentionally filing away the data relating to how fast his skin and muscles and bones can grow back. 

“Bones closer to the anterior regenerate 37% faster than those which are further.”

“One centimeter every 30 seconds.” 

“More complex structures take 24% longer to grow back.”

Bruce loses track of time, doesn’t realize that the pain is over until he wakes up in his silver-lined prison, scars pink and fresh.

He remains unconscious the next few times he was taken from his cage, the sedative granting him mercy from the agony his wounds would have caused him. They're gone now, the only hint of them having existed in the first place are the scars, specters of pain, elevated streaks of thick white tissue, smattering his abdomen. 

Bruce takes solace in the fact that they're trying to kill him, in the fact that they’ll accomplish something he couldn’t.

It’s about time, he thinks.

 

* * *

 

Ross lets him out this time. Bruce has been here a week, and his brain is fuzzy and unfocused. Ross opens the silver bars of the cage while Bruce is conscious and sitting on the dusty tile rubbing his thumb over his fist. He isn’t sedated, or paralyzed, or whatever, so Ross watches as Bruce stands on legs shaky from disuse and hunger and a lot of  _ other _ things and tries to walk. The General seems frustrated and impatient, and Bruce is torn between feeling mortified or smug, like a cat that got the canary.

“Take your time,  _ Banner, _ ” Ross bites.

“I appreciate your patience, Ross,” Bruce says through gritted teeth, “I know it must be so hard for you.”

Ross whacks the back of his head for that, and Bruce’s vision swims.

“Just walk.” 

So he does, with great difficulty. 

He thinks of running, but the device that controlled the thing - he refuses to call it a collar - was nestled in Ross’ hand, an unspoken threat. So he doesn’t run, but he notices all the doors and exits and thinks  _ maybe, just maybe _ , before he realizes that he’s supposed to die, anyway. 

So he doesn’t run, and he doesn’t look. He just walks.

Ross leads him to a room with a wooden table and chair bolted to the floor and a projector bolted to the ceiling. There aren’t any restraints anywhere, but the small gray device is always in his peripheral, the switch to knock him out always at the ready.

“ _ Very _ nice table,” Bruce said even though it really wasn’t, “what’s it made of, anyway? Oak? Cherry? Pine? Mahogany? You treat your guests so nicely.”

“Shut up,” Ross gruffs and pushes down on his shoulders forcefully so his legs buckle and he sits. Bruce shuts up even though he doesn’t want to. He folds his hands over one another on the table. It’s sticky, smells like lemon disinfectant and a hint of blood. His nose wrinkles. Ah well, after a week of being here, horrid smells and sounds became a part of the status quo. Still, it doesn’t make it any more pleasant.

“We have something very exciting planned for today,” Ross says, with zero inflection in his voice hinting at excitement. Sarcasm, probably. It was hard to tell sometimes.

“Oh boy, I can’t wait,” Bruce replies, tone just as arid as Ross’, “what’ll it be? Party games? Movie night - can we watch  _ Star Wars _ ? I haven’t seen the movies in so long, I’ll even watch the prequels -”

“Shut. Up.” Ross said as he made a specific gesture towards something on the wall. Oh, it was a camera. He could sort of see a reddish hue lighting up.

The projector flickers on, and the glows.

“Oh, so it is a movie night,” Bruce comments, “I’ll watch anything so long as it isn’t  _ Twilight _ ; I find its portrayal of werewolves rather tasteless - “ his sentence is cut off as Bruce stares at the scene on the wall.

A forest. Leaves faded but still green, because it’s farther away from the full moon, now. It appears to be security footage, and he finds himself quickly becoming uneasy, trepidation bubbling in his chest. 

He  _ knows  _ what’s coming. And yet he doesn’t, doesn’t want to accept that he does, or something. It’s odd how the brain works like that, where one side knows something the other side doesn’t. It’s an enigma he doesn’t want to think about right now because it really isn’t the time and  _ Christ that’s him. _

It’s him, in that security footage. But it isn’t  _ really _ , because it’s the Wolf, and God the Wolf is enormous. Lanky and muscular, all sinewy, corded muscle rippling under green-tinged fur. He -  _ it  _ \- looks like a wolf, also, doesn’t resemble those hybrids between canine and human that are on TV shows. 

Not that he would know anything about that, because he hasn’t seen a lick of television since the incident.

The Wolf snarls in the feed, and it sounds like an earthquake. Bruce shudders, and Ross smirks. And then something terrible happens:

The sun rises. Gold filters through leaves and projects small spotlights on the forest floor. The Wolf howls and Bruce feels something stirring deep inside him. Something that urges him to respond. He doesn’t. The howl is cut short by a painful yelp, and the Wolf hunches over, curls in on itself in pain, shuddering. Cracks sound out, and Bruce can’t help but think it’s from a limb falling from a tree, somewhere far off. But then he realizes it’s coming from him - it,  _ whatever  _ \- transforming back.

He can’t look away. He can’t move, can’t breathe. So he watches, watches as a series of snaps resound through tinny speakers. The Wolf shudders and trembles with pain as muscles warp and bones pop, joints reorient and fur retreats back into skin dotted with cuts and bruises. 

“Ouch,” says Ross, and Bruce jumps, because he had completely forgotten he was there, “that looks painful,” he states it simply and not at all sympathetically.

He wants to shout that it is. Because it  _ was _ , horrible and harrowing. Bruce watches as he wakes up, human again. Then Ross shuts the footage off.

“S-some movie night,” Bruce says, trying not to sound shaken. He had never seen the Wolf before. Had never really wanted to, either. But new experiences were always good.

“It’s not over yet,” Ross says, gesturing to the surveillance camera in the room again. Bruce doesn’t respond. A bolt of trepidation lurches through him.

The footage that flickers forth from the projector has been shot through a camera with night vision, so everything is in that odd in-between of yellow-grey-green that is typical at around this time in the lunar cycle, where hues of red and green look like they’ve been just slightly washed with bleach. 

Bruce squinted as something flashed in the darkness: two white dots, glaring at the video camera. He noticed the dim silhouette next, the shifting shadow that he could  _ just _ make out, and he realized with some apprehension that those glowing spots were  _ eyes _ . 

His eyes. The Wolf’s eyes.

It growled from behind a thicket, and the sound reverberated through the room. Bruce shivered, the blood drained from his countenance. The snarl blended with curt commands from soldiers, and then.  _ And then _ .

And then there was bloodshed. The Wolf moved fast, too fast for Bruce to keep up, pouncing on shoulders and throats and abdomens and  _ everywhere _ . Army men crumpled to the floor like a house of cards in an earthquake, faces blank and lifeless.  _ Dead. _

They were dead, and the Wolf - Bruce,  _ whatever _ , God, did it really even  _ matter _ \- killed them. It had been a vague notion in the back of his mind that he had murdered before, taken people’s lives. He had never confronted it. 

He didn’t have the courage. Still doesn’t, even now. He averts his eyes.

“Ah - don’t look away now, Banner, we’re just getting to the good part,” Ross said, face twisted and contorted and absolutely positively  _ wicked _ . The Wolf stood in carnage, stood in guts which had been spilled onto leaf litter. It was panting, tongue lolling out of its mouth slightly.

“You’re sick.” Bruce spat, shaking. He was rubbing his hands together, a nervous tick. He felt wrong, inside. Repulsive. It felt like a hand was clutching his heart. 

“I’m not the one who killed ten soldiers,” Ross retorted. And he was right. The fist tightened and his blood pumped faster than ever in his ears.  

“Then why don’t you just  _ kill  _ me, already?” He said, and his voice cracked. Snapped like the humerus of the soldier he was attacking in the video. A gunshot rang out, and Bruce heard a short yelp of pain from the Wolf.  _ Good _ . The scars littering his body made him feel better now, like he was repenting, somehow.

“Kill you?” Ross chuckled, and the sound sent chills down Bruce’s spine, “ _ Oh _ , Dr. Banner...I’m not trying to kill you…

...I’m trying to replicate you.”

Bruce bent over the side of his chair and dry heaved. His stomach felt like rotten eggs and spoiled milk. His head pounded. Those fingers around his heart clenched, tighter and tighter and tighter…

 

* * *

 

Ross could restrain him, but he couldn’t restrain the Wolf. 

After the month-long bout of torture and experimentation, Bruce finds that he can vaguely remember what had happened as the Wolf. It’s cloudy like he’s watching his memories through foggy lenses. 

_ Hurt. Cage. Ross. Escape. Free.  _

_ Free. _

Bruce is unsure as to whether that’s a good thing, but that fact quickly grows insignificant in his mind when he hears the trampling of combat boots.

_ Free. _

Bruce runs. 


	3. Hunter's Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce is visited in Kolkata.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this got too long so i had to slice it

Sometimes, when he dreamt, he dreamt in fragments. Small pieces narrated by feelings rather than words. Shards of blue and yellow and brown. No red or green or purple, for this was the Wolf’s time, where its consciousness would overtake his, conquer Bruce’s nerve endings, envelope him. 

It was always dark in these dreams - nighttime, with stars flecking the firmament, usually obscured by tree limbs laden with leaves. The colors were all washed out and faded, and everything was surrounded by an inky haze. He would be lower to the ground, only a few feet from it, and the odd long strand of grass would tickle his nose from time to time. These visions were rare; most of the time he would see nothing, but hear everything:

The rustling of leaves, gunshots, shouting. The snap of a snare after narrowly avoiding it. And then there were the streams of thoughts, of sentience:

_ Run, pain, run, pain, run, escape, free - _

These dreams were fairly new developments, the first one having occurred after his time in captivity. Bruce hypothesizes that some of the experiments jostled something that triggered the Wolf’s thoughts intermingling with his own. He didn’t like it; it made him feel disconnected from his humanity. Like the distance between him and the Wolf was lessening, the two consciousnesses melding on occasion. 

He was recalling one of these dreams now. The Wolf had been ensnared in a bear trap; the teeth lodged in his front leg. One word stood out to him:  _ trapped. _

_ Trapped. _

Bruce stood in a hovel on the fringes of Kolkata, some months later, watching the small girl he had followed crawl through a window, and finding himself feeling incredibly foolish. Perhaps he shouldn’t have decided to stay here any longer. Maybe he should have just left this morning, like he had planned. After all, it was dangerous -  _ he  _ was dangerous. The full moon was tomorrow, and even with it being 24 hours away, he could still feel the Wolf biting and clawing to be let out from beneath his skin, his scar tingling. But there had been an outbreak of malaria earlier this month, and he had passed some of the sick on his way out, and for him to just leave when he  _ knew _ how to help…

He couldn’t. Even though he should. 

So here he was, scratching absently at the bite mark on his shoulder and staring at the window where the girl had left. Watching as a woman strides into his peripheral. She wore a black catsuit with the lingering smell of gunpowder, and her hair appeared a dark brown, but he could never be certain of colors during this part of the moon cycle. Bruce  _ did  _ know a spy when he saw one, though (they were quite partial to the color black and catsuits), and something in him  _ clicked  _ as he realized that this was a trap. 

_ Should’ve known better, Banner... _

Every sense he had was heightened; the full moon dragging them to the fore. The floorboards that creaked with every carefully placed step the woman took were saturated with the smell of sweat - it seemed like perspiration permeated everything here - and spices, and…

...and  _ fear _ ; a cocktail of cortisol and adrenaline that made his nose wrinkle and his eyes scrunch. It wasn’t a pleasant aroma, all bitter. Bruce turned his head and glowered at the woman standing across from him. The woman who had apparently hired the girl to bring him here. Her hair frizzed from the humidity and, if he looked closely, he could see fear flecked in those yellow ( _ green _ ) eyes. Hear her heartbeat increasing in pace. 

Bruce scrubbed his face with his hands, suddenly feeling very tired. He half-sat on the table behind him, posture crumbling. He tried to keep his fingers from trembling, prevent his legs from buckling beneath him, because sure:  _ she  _ was frightened, but he even more so. She could leave whenever, stride out the door as easily as she had come in; he was trapped in here, in this hovel, and next he would be trapped in a silver cage. Like a dog in a kennel, like the Wolf a few months back in that bear trap. Like a monster. His hands rubbed at his neck, as if trying to reassure him that there was no collar around it, no chemicals being pumped into his bloodstream. He wasn’t  _ there _ , though the thought of going back to that  _ place _ \-- Bruce shuddered, the very idea repulsing him. The memories alone - ghosts of sounds, spectres of flashing lights and  _ pain _ , dancing across his skin - were more than enough to send bolts of anxiety across his frayed nerves. 

“You’ve chosen one hell of a place to settle.” she spoke, and her voice was void of any emotion. It flatlined like a heart monitor hooked up to a corpse. But Bruce knew better -  _ smelled  _ better, and she was very obviously off put by his presence. Fearful. As she should be. He snorted in both self loathing and satisfaction. 

“‘Settled’ isn’t the word I’d use to describe it,” he said dryly, voice raspy and barely above a whisper. He hadn’t spoken much this month - his throat would lock whenever he tried, seeming to decide of it own accord that it was unnecessary - and his vocal chords were unused to the act of talking. “But I’m sure you knew that already, huh?” if they had managed to find him, that meant that they had seen his current living situation, which consisted of a portion of cracked pavement in an alleyway that had the least amount of shattered glass on it. One baggy set of clothes. A few crumpled rupees. 

About as settled as he’s ever been in the past few years, essentially.

The spy decided to cut right to the chase. “I’m here on behalf of SHIELD. We need you to come in.” He stared at her. SHIELD was better than the Military, but only because SHIELD had yet to capture and experiment on him. Though Bruce figured that was about to change, if her words were anything to go by. 

The thought caused his paranoia to increase tenfold. Bruce’s eyes darted around the room, cataloging any exit, and he attempted to move away from her but the back of his thighs bumped into the rickety table.

_ Frontdoor, backdoor, kitchen window, bedroom window, escape escape escape escape trapped trapped trapped trapped - _

He had to smother a snarl that threatened to rise in his throat. The Wolf was especially on edge today. Made sense; the full moon was in close proximity, after all.

The clichéd sound of a twig snapping reached his ears, which swiveled to amplify the noise. Then he picked up other sounds as well: the clicking of a gun being loaded, various pieces of artillery shifting. About twenty individual heartbeats a few meters away, outside. They were surrounded -  _ he  _ was surrounded.

“We’re surrounded.” he stated, not out of necessity or for a response, for he knew it was true. 

“Nothing will happen if you cooperate,” the spy replied, not bothering to lie. Obviously she wanted him to trust her. Bruce huffed humorlessly, anxiety swelling like a tumor in his throat.  _ Ridiculous. _ ‘ _ Nothing will happen’, my ass. _ He nodded in response, not trusting his ability to withhold the sob building in his chest. If he…” _ cooperates _ ”, then he gets taken to a lab. If he doesn’t, he gets shot. Either way, pain was inevitable, inexorable. He wants to chuckle at the hopelessness of it all.

“Nothing will happen?”

“Nothing. I promise -“

The words bubble and burst out of him, as sudden as a pot boiling over, red hot with fury:

“STOP LYING TO ME!”

Bruce blinks and he misses her drawing her gun, no doubt loaded with silver bullets. The sight of the weapon sends the Wolf into a rage, growling and raising its hackles. Bruce holds the urge to follow in its lead down. He holds his hands up. Surrenders.

“I’m sorry, that was mean.”

She’s panting, lungs finally catching up with the speed of her heart, eyes misty and cloudy with tears. 

And then Bruce blinks again and the fog dissipates from her irises and her breathing slows, face as stoic as it was before. 

The tension is still thick in the room.

“Doctor Banner,” she begins again, voice as smooth as stone, “we’re facing a potential global catastrophe -”

He snorts. “Well those I actively try to avoid.”  
“We need you to come in,” she spoke, ignoring his interruption, then reached into a pouch on her hip and pulled out a flip phone. “This is the Tesseract,” a picture of a cube was on the screen. It was blue. He wondered if it was actually that color. “It has the potential to wipe out the whole planet.”

He had always needed glasses, even as a kid. Bruce was very nearsighted, and anything more than a foot away appeared blotchy, like a watercolor painting. The Accident had only exacerbated this, so he stepped closer to the phone to take a look, despite the alarms blaring in his head, telling him to keep his distance. He glanced up at her cautiously with every step.

“What do you want me to do? Swallow it?”

“Director Fury wants you to find it. It emits a gamma signature that’s too weak for us to trace. There’s no one that knows gamma radiation like you do. If there was, that’s where I’d be.” Her tone of voice was very tricky to understand. It was deep and smooth and void of any of the little tremors of emotion that escaped the lips of other people. For Bruce, who had always had low empathy, attempting to parse her sincerity was like trying to read cuneiform. Like trying to grab and hold water. Though this feeling wasn’t at all uncommon; he usually didn’t notice someone was upset until they were crying.

“So Fury doesn’t want…” want what? The monster? The beast? Bruce’s greatest regret? “the Wolf?” he settles on. 

“Not that he’s told me.”

He huffs. “And he tells you everything?” The spy opened her mouth to reply, to avoid the question no doubt, before Bruce’s mouth moved of its own volition. “Did he tell you what time it was?” It was 24 more hours until the cycle resets, until his life resets and he wakes up somewhere  _ not  _ Kolkata. 

“We have accommodations for your…” she seemed to ponder on the correct word, one that wouldn’t come off as impolite, “condition: maraging steel alloy walls lined with silver. Next best thing would be vibranium.” 

Bruce mulled it over. “Alright.”

 

* * *

 

Bruce hated flying. The pressure would smother his ear drums and make him feel incredibly off kilter; deaf almost, even though he could still hear better than he did before the Incident. The rotary blades of the chopper were loud and horrible. It felt like a woodpecker was rapping against his ear. 

The spy, who had introduced herself as Natasha Romanov, had led him out of the hovel and into a helicopter. Bruce had tried to ignore the soldiers surrounding him as he did so, their loud footsteps  stirring up clouds of dust. 

Now, he tries to ignore the black-clad thigh of Romanov touching his, and tries to avoid giving the exponentially increasing thoughts of paranoia the light of day. 

“Steve Rogers will be there,” Romanov suddenly spoke.

“Huh?” he looked up from staring at his palms, open and face up on his leg. Sometimes he would move a finger slightly, a slight twitch, just to remind himself that he could. That he still had control, and the Wolf didn’t. 

“Captain America,” she clarified. 

“Huh.” 

His stomach churns. He realizes he hadn’t eaten anything for the better half of a day. Bruce wonders if they had meat wherever they were going. He wonders if the ache comes from anxiety. Perhaps it was both.

Wherever they were going turned out to be a large battleship, adorned with helipads and landing strips. Soldiers and pilots ambled about, barking orders at one another. They made him nervous, and his hands started fumbling with each other of their own accord. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t separate SHIELD and the Military in his mind. They were inherently tied to the government’s whims, and they both wanted to use him for something. It’s only a matter of time before SHIELD’s use for him morphs from him doing the experiments to him  _ being  _ the experiment. 

Bruce is so submerged in his own thoughts that he doesn’t notice the two figures walking towards him.

“Dr Banner,” a voice says. Bruce startles, turns to see who he assumes is Steve Rogers in all his perfection walking towards him, Romanov in tow. 

“Oh um, yeah. Hi. She uh, she told me you’d be coming,” Bruce didn’t smile. His tongue ran over his canines in his mouth. They were too sharp, too unsettling. They would make a bad impression, he feels.

Steve held out his hand for him to shake. Bruce hesitated, before reaching out. His nails hadn’t been filed down this month, and were still razor sharp. Steve didn’t comment on them, just said:

“Word is you can find the cube.” 

His lips twisted wryly, self-deprecatingly. “Is that the only word on me?”

“Only word I care about.”

Bruce absorbed the sentiment, and he found himself smiling. He stopped, poked his tongue with a pointed tooth.  _ Ow _ . Rows of soldiers marched past. 

“Must be weird for you, all of, all of this.” the modernity of it. The ground made of stainless steel and the high-tech equipment surrounding them. It was certainly weird for Bruce, who had been living in areas lacking running water for a good few years. 

“Actually, this is all kind of familiar.”

A lull in the conversation.

“Boys, you might want to step inside in a minute. It’s going to get a little hard to breathe.” 

The floor shook, and Bruce jolted in tandem. Water roiled over the side of the ship, vortexes surrounded large mechanical protrusions. Wind whipped Bruce’s sloppily-cropped curly hair into knots. 

“Is this a submarine?” Steve asked at his side. 

“Really? They want me in a submerged pressurized metal container?” The full moon was tonight, after all. No one wants to be trapped leagues under the sea with a deranged wolf. 

The mechanical protrusions turned out to be fans, strong propellers that frothed the seawater into foam. The battleship hefted itself out of the ocean and into the air. Bruce smiles a hopeless smile. 

“Oh, no, this is much worse,” he has to yell to be heard over the din.

Bruce hates flying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter or two will include the plotline of the ONLY avengers movie ever made. after that we get the Romance......

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr!


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